Computing-intensive or data-intensive organizations such as on-line retailers, Internet service providers, search providers, financial institutions, and the like often conduct computer operations from large scale computing facilities, known as data centers. Such computing facilities house and accommodate a large number of server, network, and other computer equipment suitable to process, store, and exchange data as desired to facilitate the organization's operations. Data centers can be located local to the organization or remote from the organization, such that data can be exchanged to and from the data center over a hard wire, over the internet, or a combination of the two. Typically, a computer room of a data center includes many racks that each includes a rack housing that supports a plurality of brackets that are spaced from one another so as to define a corresponding plurality of mounting slots, otherwise known as bays. The racks are configured to support a respective plurality of servers that are rack-mounted to the rack housing in the bays so as to define a rack system.
Data centers typically include a number of components that generate a significant amount of waste heat during operation. Such components include printed circuit boards, mass data storage devices, power supplies, and processors. For example, some computers with multiple processors can generate 250 watts of waste heat. For example, a standard 19-inch rack may hold ten to twenty servers of various heights of 1 U, 2 U, and 3 U (wherein “U” designates a rack unit of 1.75 inches). Some conventional rack systems can include up to forty or more such rack-mounted components, and such rack systems can generate as much as 10 kilowatts of waste heat. It is thus recognized that removal of waste heat is a significant challenge in the day-to-day management of data centers.
One conventional attempt to thermally regulate rack systems includes the division of the data center room into hot air aisles and cold air aisles. Cold air is fed into the cold air aisle, such that internal fans of the individual servers draw the cold air from the cold air aisle so that the cold air flows around various server components, and expel heated air into the hot air aisle. It should thus be appreciated that the racks are open to both the cold air aisles and the warm air aisles. Conventional air cooling systems often require large amounts of energy to cool the air that is delivered to the cold air aisle, and are thus inefficient.